Product Management

Ad agencies have offered huge value for advertisers for decades and continue to do so. This will never change.

The key benefits of outsourcing the media planning and buying function to ad agencies include the likes of: global negotiating power, specialist contacts for sponsorship deals, cross client learnings, cross channel integration, deal with the hassle and admin and it’s someone for the CMO or CEO to blame if the business isn’t hitting key targets.

With programmatic buying (Paid Search, Social Media, Display RTB, Online Video, Mobile and Affiliates) becoming the bulk of digital Marketing, the majority of these benefits no longer applies therefore it doesn’t make sense and can be classed as lazy if a brand wasn’t to even consider taking all programmatic buying in-house.

Although rightfully CEO’s obsess about growth, also ‘wastage’ and efficiency across the business needs to be reviewed often.

Let’s look at the pros and cons for taking all programmatic buying in-house:
Pros

• New digital media team would be sitting next to all other marketing areas eg. CRM, creative, content, web design, product managers.
• Close to business KPI’s and budgets so they can be extremely reactive.
• No hidden margins in bid platforms.
• Can often get cheaper adserving and bid platform rates.
• Team become specialists in the business sector / vertical.
• 100% of time and focus will be given to the one client.
• Learnings and data won’t be shared with other clients with no chance of leakage to competitors.
• Can turn around new campaigns significantly quicker.
• 24 hour contact.
• Will always have the time to stay ahead of the game.
• Work closely with the data team / in-house DMP optimising on real KPI’s such as revenue / LTV / ARPU.
• Can openly recommend business requirements to CEO in order to get things done quickly and grow the business.
• No hidden agendas – everyone aiming for the same goal.
• Other internal departments can be educated about what role the media buy has on business goals.

Cons

• Can take six months to recruit team, train grads and setup systems and data integrations.
• Ad agency would have to make more effort to integrate offlline and online brand with internal programmatic team.
• The CEO might ignore team recommendations of key requirements needed to improve marketing.
• CMO would need to find someone who has +5 years experience in programmatic buying across all channels to head up the team and train the grads.

There are certainly plenty of pros and if you’re wondering how to kick things off, speak to some of the recruitment agencies below who will be able to provide an abundance off free advice:

Neil’ Recruitment

Digital Bubble